President Obama names 'cops' for finance

President Barack Obama is taking an aggressive posture toward Wall Street as he kicks off his second term and is showing little interest in compromising with Republicans over a central part of his signature financial reform law — the new consumer watchdog agency.

On Thursday, Obama announced his intent to nominate former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White as the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission and said he will renominate Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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Obama nominates Mary Jo White to head SEC

White remarks on nomination

Obama nominates Richard Cordray to lead CFPB

In nominating White, who made her name taking on terrorists and mob bosses, the president sent a signal to both his liberal base and the business community that cracking down on Wall Street will be a priority for his second term.

In renominating Cordray, the president showed he welcomes a fight with Senate Republicans over their stance that no one will be confirmed to lead the consumer watchdog unless changes are made that give Congress more power over how it operates.

“It’s not enough to change the law,” Obama said at a White House event Thursday, referring to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. “We also need cops on the beat to enforce the law.”

The administration has come under criticism from reform advocates and some liberals for being too timid in going after bad actors from the 2008 financial crisis.

But even some of the administration’s staunchest critics over how it has policed Wall Street cheered the pick of White.

“We welcome the nomination of a white-collar crime fighter to an agency whose leaders too often considered the SEC to be the Wall Street chamber of commerce,” Public Citizen financial policy advocate Bartlett Naylor said in a statement. “Ideally, she’ll embrace her mandate to protect investors. If she can face down terrorists and racketeers, presumably she won’t be intimidated by cost-benefit analysis litigation.”

White’s honeymoon with Wall Street critics could be short-lived if the agency — which pursues civil, not criminal cases — doesn’t show early on in her tenure that it will go after financial firms and executives for misdeeds.

Critics, in particular, have questioned why more hasn’t been done about bankers who helped enable the subprime housing crisis by packaging faulty loans into securities sold to investors.

Industry officials publicly praised White for her experience and reputation for fairness but are privately taking a wait-and-see approach.

“Just based on her background, which is all we have to go on now, you would expect her to focus on her sweet spot of enforcement, and for the SEC, that probably means more insider-trading cases,” said a financial services lobbyist. “But who knows, maybe she’ll come in energized and pick a high-profile case or two to focus on.”

A confirmation of White would also keep a woman as head of a top financial regulator at a time when the administration is facing questions about the diversity of the president’s latest round of nominees for administration jobs.